O.K. some days I wake up and my face feels older than my body. I have to be extra careful shaving and the mirror isn’t kind either. It leaves me miserable all day. But then I think…tomorrow…I’ll just skip the shaving altogether. This is the condensation of optimism.
As we enter 2016 I’m searching for the laughter. I can’t follow a cynicism that takes Donald Trump seriously…or imagines that Bashir Assad will suddenly have a change of heart. I don’t believe the Saudis are any worse than the NRA but they both belong on a small island with no running water. ISIS was an ancient goddess whose name is being taken in vain…and she will punish. Arms dealers are a blight upon our souls. Child soldiers are just retribution for ignorance, poverty and our past sins. Drive-by shootings are not misguided youthful indiscretions.
There is a new world war…it’s happening on our streets…we call it crime. It’s not…it’s poverty versus privilege. Privilege appears to be winning because the poor keep shooting the poor. China watches. The media bugs phones and hacks e-mails and sells advertising. It periodically lies on behalf of its sponsors. We accept self-censorship in the name of political correctness in the hope that our children will not be racists. Our determination to be fit begins at our feet and ends at our necks. Every day we pee in fresh water and flush it while millions around the world wash their hands with sand. We assume the luxury of applause for the movie we call life. We shouldn’t. People think the “good old days” were better than this. They’re wrong. The same people think that things are going to get worse. They’re probably right.
The one fact that is rarely discussed about global warming…is that it’s almost always followed by an ice age. Remember those stories about woolly mammoths being found frozen solid with a mouth full of buttercups…let me say that again…frozen solid with a mouth full of buttercups!…O.K. one minute you’re munching wild-flowers with bees buzzing around your head and the next minute you’re a block of ice and you didn’t even have time to swallow the last bite. I live in a place where it was eight degrees and raining yesterday and minus fifteen this morning and I was scraping a quarter inch of ice off my windshield…I understand flash freezing…but I can’t imagine whatever it was that hit those mammoths.
When I was little I thought banks were places where you put your money to sleep and earn a little interest while we thought of using it for something stupid. My parents lived through the great depression. They knew better. One of my uncles learned that I lived outside the law sometimes…urged me to rob a bank. Any bank would do, he said. I didn’t…and still regret that I couldn’t do that for him.
Even in war zones people get up in the morning, kiss their kids and go off to work…sometimes dodging sniper lanes. They do mundane things…do the laundry, take the garbage out, look for groceries, talk to neighbours, laugh at jokes…hope tomorrow will be better, easier. People keep going. Make love, get sick, get well, grow old…get fed up with it all. There ought to be a day set aside every year when we can all look at each other, smile and hug and slap each other on the back. We should congratulate each other for putting up with it all. We could call it Humanity Day.
Our society is held together by trust, faith, hope and fear. The role of propaganda in this equation cannot be over estimated…because neither trust nor faith nor hope nor fear have anything to do with facts. Well you know…today’s fact is tomorrow’s “Maybe-not-so-much”. Hmm…culture is the collection of concepts that define our society…describes us…our music, our art, our dance, our architecture, our literature, our eduction, our food, our religions, our relationships…our guns, our knives, our armies, our enemies. Get it? Even if we don’t know who we are…others do.
So for me 2016 is a year to look for laughter, for absurdity…to find humour in the ridiculous. And tomorrow I’m going to skip the shaving…This is the condensation of optimism.
David Bowie died today. R.I.P.
Chagal4's Blog 
Leave a comment